Limits without Scarcity

International Development Leverhulme seminar presented by Professor Giorgos Kallis (SOAS), who will revisit the notions of limits in modern environmentalism.

Lunch (provided) from 12.00, presentation & discussion 12.30 - 14.00. To reserve your free place, please email Claire Emburey.

Abstract
Professor Kallis will revisit the notion of limits, a central, if somewhat tarnished, idea of modern environmentalism. He will draw a distinction between limits and scarcity, and between collective self-limitation and external limits, arguing that from Malthus onwards limits and scarcity are used dialectically as the justification of what has been framed as their opposite: growth and progress. The most recent reincarnations of this are the visions of green-growth or eco-modernism. De-growth environmentalism instead calls for a collective self-limitation as the only way towards an egalitarian abundance.

Giorgos Kallis is an ICREA professor at ICTA (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and currently a Leverhulme visiting professor at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS. He is co-editor of Degrowth: A vocabulary for a New Era (Routledge, 2015).